The Constitution and what Kurt Godel foresaw. [View All]

[Manifestor_of_Light]

My BF found this in one of his recent purchases of "light reading" as we call it.



Subject: A prophetic insight


I found the following in my latest 1300 page doorstop, "God Created the Integers (All the rest is the work of Man)" - a history of mathematics edited by Stephen Hawking.

It's rather prophetic that an immigrant (Kurt Gödel) saw 60 years ago what had to be done a few months ago to stop "W" from making appointments without congressional approval:

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Einstein played a role in one of the strangest and most amusing incidents in Gödel’s life. Gödel became an American citizen in December 1947. He studied diligently for his hearing, much more diligently than necessary. The economist Oskar Morgenstern, one of his closest friends, noticed Gödel becoming more and more upset as the hearing date approached. Morgenstern simply thought that Gödel was nervous in anticipation of the hearing. A few days before the hearing Gödel confided to Morgenstern that he had found a serious flaw in the American Constitution. The President could fill vacancies without Senate approval while the Senate was in recess. This, Gödel reasoned, could lead to a dictatorship!

Morgenstern realized that he and Einstein needed to persuade Gödel that pursuing this point during his citizenship hearing might well jeopardize his chances of being granted citizenship. Einstein joined Morgenstern who drove Gödel to Trenton for the hearing. During the drive Gödel’s two friends tried to persuade him to stay away from this topic, but they failed. When Judge Phillip Forman asked Gödel, “Whether a dictatorship similar to the one in Germany could arise in the US?” Gödel, following his inclination to focus on the logical rather than the practical, answered in the affirmative and began to expound on the supposed flaw in the constitution. Fortunately for Gödel, Judge Forman, who had also presided at Einstein’s hearing, found Einstein’s presence to be a sufficient reference for Gödel, and quickly steered him to other topics.